Chapter Seven #2
Maybe he should get coaching from Luca. Guys were supposed to enjoy sex, and he knew Luca did.
So what if Chris had never been attracted to another guy?
He’d also never looked at a girl and thought, I want to fuck her, so why not try the coaching thing?
Luca liked both guys and girls, so he must have some good insights about what Chris was doing wrong and how he could fix it.
But did “coaching” mean doing things with each other or just talking about them?
Chris assumed the former when they’d first talked about it because he was a hands-on learner.
Did that really mean Luca wanted to touch him? Why would he? He could have anyone.
Maybe he would bring a girl home and demonstrate with her.
The thought of being sidelined in his own apartment made Chris feel the way he imagined being picked last in gym class would feel, though he’d never experienced that himself.
He’d never enjoyed watching porn after the opening scenes, where two people got closer and started kissing.
The sex part always ended up being a letdown after the excitement of potential romance, with bodies slapping together over and over to a soundtrack of overdone moans.
Watching Luca and some girl have sex couldn’t be too different, but it would involve the added reminder of Luca wanting people who weren’t Chris.
He would tell Luca he’d be up for any kind of coaching except getting other people involved.
Mind made up, Chris tuned back into the conversation to realize the guys had moved on to a dramatic reading of Ben’s most recent articles about the end of baseball season, a sport Chris couldn’t care less about if he tried.
He twisted in his seat and focused on the fast-paced Russian going on behind him as Dmitriyev and Fedorov kicked Hayes’s and Vanderbilt’s asses at Mario Kart.
By the time they landed in Chicago, he’d had his own ass handed to him and had learned how to say a number of very rude things in Russian about people’s mothers, which he would not be repeating.
Lindy announced another 10:00 p.m. curfew.
During the preseason, she’d done thorough room checks, using spare keys from reception if no one answered when she knocked.
Vanderbilt’s Tinder hookup had to do the walk of shame out of the hotel half naked, and the backup goalie, Nilsson, hadn’t started in a game all preseason after he skipped out on curfew entirely to go home with some girl he’d met at a bar.
Since their arrival was at ten after five, Chris doubted he’d see anything but the inside of his hotel room and the private section of the restaurant Jax had reserved for team dinner.
But he hadn’t counted on Luca’s sneakiness.
He snagged Chris by the elbow as they left the airport and directed him over to the taxi stands instead of the team bus. “Diego will get our things to our rooms.”
Chris watched the team retreating. “And dinner—”
“We’ll be at the restaurant in time. I would not make you miss the first team dinner on the road.”
Knowing Luca could take or leave team bonding, and would probably prefer to leave it, Chris was touched by the gesture. “Awesome. Where are we headed?”
“You will see,” Luca said.
Their destination turned out to be a boat scheduled to leave from a downtown pier a scant half hour after their plane landed.
Tourists crowded the dock and lined up at the inside bar before the motor even started.
Luca led Chris up to the top deck instead, and they settled in the only free pair of chairs they could find.
Within moments, the boat took off, first down the river and then up. All the while, the captain narrated each passing building with facts about its architects and history. The wind blew over them, fresh and cool, and Chris became one person among many, watching the city pass him by.
“This is so cool,” he enthused, snapping a picture of the sign on the bottom of the bridge that read “Lake Shore Drive” and then, moments later, another of the graffiti along the shoreline which read, “You are on Potawatomi land” in all capital letters.
Chris would never remember any of the names of the people who had built or lived in all of the skyscrapers around them, but if he had the pictures, he would remember not only what it had looked like but maybe, if he was lucky, how it had felt.
Luca leaned on the railing, staring out over the water. In mid-October, the sky darkened at 6:00 p.m., and the lights of the city reflected off the gentle waves surrounding the boat. Pictures taken, Chris put his phone away and went to stand beside him.
“How did you even find this?”
Luca turned to him. The wry quirk of his mouth emphasized his full lips and high cheekbones. “It is the top tourist attraction in Chicago on TripAdvisor. It was not hard.”
The thought that Luca had spent time online—researching things they could do together and booking a slot into their tight schedule—made Chris choke up with emotion for a moment.
“I think you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”
Luca blinked in surprise. His long eyelashes swept over his perfect cheeks. “Oh. I—thank you. And likewise.”
Chris beamed. Luca probably said it to be polite.
There was no way he felt as keenly as Chris did about how much better his life had become now Luca was in it.
And how much he dreaded the thought of Luca ever leaving.
But hearing it made him feel special all the same.
“And also, as for the coaching thing…” Chris said.
“Yeah. I trust you, and if you do want to help me—”
“I do,” Luca interjected.
“Great! So, um…” Chris realized he had no idea how to proceed from here.
Luca bumped their shoulders together. “You should think about what you want. It sounded as if you have had many, ah, encounters in which you did not get what you wanted or you did not want what you got.”
“Okay. But what if I don’t know what I want?”
“Then we will have to experiment.”
“What about you?”
“Hm?”
“What about what you want? You’re doing this as a favor. I don’t want you doing anything you aren’t comfortable with. We can stick to just, like, talking about stuff if you’d rather—”
Luca looked back out at the water, shoulders shaking.
“Luca?” Chris asked. “Are you okay? Did I—”
A loud laugh escaped Luca, and then another, and then he was laughing so hard he had to clutch at the railing to stay upright.
Chris frowned. “I know I’m not on your level or anything, but if the idea of doing things with me is ridiculous—”
Luca turned to him, eyes still bright with mirth. He placed one of his elegant, long-fingered hands on Chris’s cheek. “Breezy.” He hesitated, then corrected himself. “Chris. Trust me. There is nothing we could do together that I would not want.”
The tour picked up again, and they fell silent, listening.
Afterward, the boat docked with barely enough time for them to join the others at the fancy steakhouse where Jax had reserved a room.
Because it was their first dinner together of the season, the coaches came with them, so Phil attended as well.
He sat with Tom, Jax, and Lindy at one end of the long table while Hayes and Vanderbilt monopolized the other end.
The Scandinavians and Russians formed little groups in between.
Chris sat between Mooney and Howie, with Luca across from them.
“No hockey talk tonight,” Phil announced from his end, which meant everyone defaulted to speaking to their friends and their friends alone.
They needed to do better. It would never be their year if they couldn’t get over themselves.
After the appetizers, Chris made Mooney switch places with him so he could talk to Dmitriyev about his summer.
Dmitriyev rarely spent time in the States between hockey seasons.
As soon as the locker rooms were cleared out, he was on a plane home to Moscow.
He had a dacha somewhere in the countryside, and Chris made a point of remembering the word this year after forgetting it the three years prior.
Dmitriyev and Fedorov both laughed at his pronunciation, but it got them talking.
With Dmitriyev as a translator, Fedorov managed to describe his hometown a little.
It turned out he came from the Russian countryside, and his parents ran a farm, which in turn, interested Howie.
Soon, he and Fedorov began comparing notes about feeding chickens at the crack of dawn followed by hockey practice at seven.
“Wait,” Nieminen asked from the other side of the table. “I thought your father coached hockey?”
“Oh, yeah, my mom runs the farm,” Howie explained. “She got it from her dad. My youngest sister helps her now.”
It was a good segue to talking about everyone’s siblings.
Jax would take any opportunity to brag about his baby sisters, something he had in common with Luca.
It turned out Fedorov had an older brother who had tried to break into professional hockey with no success, and now he worried about what to say when he called home, hoping not to alienate him.
Most of the Swedes also had siblings either in the league or in professional sports somewhere or other, so Chris left them giving Fedorov advice. He turned to Vanderbilt.
“How’s Lily?”
He’d been dreading this part of the evening.
How to bridge the gap that couldn’t be bridged?
Discussing family worked with the others, but Hayes was an only child, and Vanderbilt was, well, a Vanderbilt.
Chris had no clue how to mention his family without making it weird.
The easiest topics of conversation were hockey—which Phil had forbidden—their wives and, in Vanderbilt’s case, his daughter.
Chris wasn’t prepared for the way Vanderbilt’s entire face lit up at the mention of Lily.
“She’s amazing,” he gushed. “They always tell you every baby is a miracle, but I didn’t think it was really true, you know?”